Donald Trump takes a break from the Ukraine talks today to look at matters closer to home.
Specifically, he’s looking at how he can avoid losing his wafer thin majorities in the House and Senate, despite being the second most unpopular President in history – after himself last time around.
He’s planning to do that, partially, by redrawing constituency boundaries in some states – chiefly Texas – to create more easily winnable seats in next year’s mid-term elections.
But it’s worth bearing in mind the raft of other ways Trump is trying to rig the mid-term election – not to mention the 2028 presidential election, which he so obviously wants to run in. Or at least cancel.
We also reported recently that he wants to do a new census. A new one isn’t due for several years – but he wants to do a new one now, and demand that only people in the country legally are counted.
The census is used to decide how election districts are drawn, and removing non-citizens is likely to benefit Republicans hugely.
Oh, and acting on advice of that expert on running free and fair elections, Vladimir Putin, he wants to ban postal voting.
And let’s not forget that on Monday, when he sat down with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, he openly mused about using a war as an excuse to cancel elections – something many have feared Trump was planning to do all along.
Here’s more on what’s going to happen today, as well as some other dictator-adjacent things that happened in Trump World in the last 24 hours. Everything is fine.
1. Trump’s plan to rig the midterm elections gets ugly
In all likelihood, Republicans in Texas will today pass a law redrawing constituency boundaries to be more favourable to them – almost certainly handing them five extra seats in the House of Representatives.
The last time they tried this a couple of weeks ago, Democrats got around it by leaving the state, so there wouldn’t be enough people in the chamber to satisfy the rules allowing them to press for a vote.
How did they get round that this time? By literally imprisoning Democrats in the state House chamber.
Seriously, Democratic representatives were ordered to sign a document agreeing to round-the-clock police escorts – not for their own protection, but to keep tabs on them in case they try to leave Texas again.
Those who refused were locked in the chamber.
How this could possibly legal is a matter of some confusion. It’s certainly not democratic.
Meanwhile, Democrat governor Gavin Newsom of California – the guy whose amusing faux-Trump tweets you keep seeing on your timeline – has vowed to redistrict California to cancel out the Texas gerrymandering.
2. Trump spotted testing out his new patio
Donald Trump was spotted hanging out on the edge of the new, Mar-a-lago-ified Rose Garden yesterday, testing a new sound system.
And what song was he blasting out across the concreted over garden, now covered with the exact same chairs, tables and umbrellas seen at his Florida club?
Of course, it was God Bless the USA, by Lee Greenwood. Of COURSE it was.
According to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Trump was testing the speakers for “what will be the greatest event in the history of the White House.”
3. Trump moans that the Smithsonian doesn’t talk up the benefits of slavery
Trump posted some more about his Pyongyang-esque plan to rewrite history by putting pressure on the Smithsonian museums to reflect his views.
And this time he was a bit more specific, in a particularly troubling way.
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE,”” he wrote.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”
The burgeoning dictator went on to say he has instructed lawyers to comb through museum exhibits and “start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.”
By which he presumably means extorting them into doing manifestly objectionable and antidemocratic things for fear of losing all their funding.
4. The White House comes to a decision on TikTok
The thrice-delayed deadline for TikTok to sell to non-Chinese buyers or be banned from the US is due to expire in early September.
So the White House has come to a decision. It’s decided to …join TikTok.
The new account posted its first video yesterday – a 27 second clip with a voice over of Trump saying: “Every day I wake up determined to deliver a better life for the People all across this nation. I am your voice.”
TikTok remains owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company which is part-owned by the Chinese government.
5. You can almost smell the burning plastic
In case you thought the White House wasn’t quite gaudy enough, Trump’s team unveiled a new portrait in the West Wing.
In it, Trump, looking particularly svelte, walks grimacing between rows of American flags, apparently away from a blazing bin fire.
6. Is everything alright mate?
Donald Trump has started telling people he wants to get to heaven, and he’s not sure he will.
In a display of introspection that’s quite out of character for Trump, he said during a phone interview with (who else?) Fox and Friends, yesterday: “I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I hear I’m not doing well. I hear I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole.”
I mean, it could be introspection. Alternatively, it could be just that he needs to start telling people his motivation for making “peace deals” is something other than a Nobel Prize.
Asked later at the Press Briefing whether the President was joking, or whether there was a “spiritual motivation” behind his push for “peace deals”, Karoline Leavitt said no: “The President wants to get to heaven.”
7. European leaders scrambled to Washington because of all the “progress”
Karoline Leavitt had a delightful bit of spin for why European leaders scrambled to Washington for Ukraine talks on Monday.
It wasn’t because they were afraid that Trump was about to sell Europe’s future security out to Putin, like you thought. Nor was it a show of solidarity with Volodymyr Zelensky after the shellacking he got last time he visited DC.
Nope, it was because Trump made so much “progress.”
“There was so much progress in the readout that was given to these European leaders immediately following his meeting with President Putin that every single one of them got on a plane 48 hours later and flew to the United States of America.”
As I believe they say in America, ‘Sure, Jan.’
8. They gave the Pizzagate guy a seat in the press room
I’ve written before about the special “new media seat” in the press room. To recap, the seating in the press room is arranged by the White House Correspondents Association – a body independent of the administration.
So realising they couldn’t have total control over what they were asked and who could ask it, the Trump administration sneakily added a new chair to the Press Room – the “new media seat”. The occupant of the seat is invited by the White House, and always gets called on for a question first.
I, for one, can’t imagine any actual reporter feeling comfortable supplicating themselves to the extent where they’d sit in Karoline’s special chair.
But it’s OK, because for the vast majority of the time, actual reporters are nowhere near it. Instead, it’s a steady stream of right-wing grifters, MAGA influencers and people from the MyPillow guy’s website.
So it was that yesterday Leavitt introduced Jack Posobiec, an “alt-right” personality and conspiracy theorist, whose work has touched on white supremacist talking points and attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election. His tweets have frequently included white supremacist codes and dogwhistles.
And he was one of the most prominent promoters of the false conspiracy theory “Pizzagate”, which claimed a child-sex ring was being run from the basement of a Washington DC pizzeria.
(This could be put down to a bit of fun until 2016, when a guy turned up to the restaurant with a gun and demanded to see the basement, only to be told by bewildered staff that there was no basement.)
Yay new media.
9. Dan Bongino’s position at the FBI seems uncertain
Former fitness podcast host-turned (sigh) Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino has been on departure watch for months – ever since he had a big row with Attorney General Pam Bondi, which was followed by a curiously unscheduled day off.
Now it’s emerged that while he’s still Deputy Director of the FBI…he’s sharing the role with someone else.
Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey, has been tapped up to be a co-Deputy, a move which has surprised quite a lot of people.
Bongino responded to the announcement with a one-word tweet, saying: “Welcome”, followed by three American flags.
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10. Fox News host caught up in Trump’s crime crackdown
And finally…Brett Baier, the Fox News personality who interviewed Donald Trump immediately after his meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday, appears to have got caught up in Trump’s DC “crime” crackdown.
Footage shows him being pulled over by police in a white 4×4, and providing documents to an officer through his open window.
Baier later explained the stop on Twitter : “I picked up my ringing phone as I drove past an officer while driving my wife’s car in Georgetown. He pointed to have me pull over – I did.
“He was very professional. I had to dig for the registration card. Got a ticket and left. I didn’t know there was paparazzi.”